Making massive meals: Groups explain how it's done

Published: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at 07:48 PM.

On Tuesday night, a group was making the potato salad from potatoes donated by West Webb Grill & Curb Market. Allen said the grocer donated four 10-pound bags.

“That’s a whole lot of potatoes to peel,” she said.

Tonight is when everyone — from churches to individuals — cooks the turkeys and side items, which are brought to Grace United Methodist Church at about 11:15 a.m. Thursday for the afternoon dinner.

Brookdale Senior Living started preparing its meals even earlier, since its eight independent or senior living locations throughout the Triangle and surrounding areas will be delivering 700 dinners to seniors beyond the facilities’ walls.

In addition to providing meals for their residents, the eight locations within the Brookdale Senior Living company have cooked gourmet meals of turkey and gravy, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish and pumpkin pie for elderly individuals in the community who don’t have families or can’t make it out of the house for Thanksgiving events.

Rebecca Smith, senior regional sales director for Brookdale Senior Living, said associates and partners of each community recommend individuals in the community they know won’t be eating Thanksgiving dinner with family, after clearing it first with the seniors.

Most people this Thanksgiving will be stuffing a single turkey, perhaps slicing a lone ham, and preparing one large bowl of each side dish that will adorn a festive table. But organizations and churches in the community will be slicing, dicing, cooking and stuffing enough to feed hundreds.

And they can’t just start on Thursday morning.

Grace United Methodist Church will be hosting a potluck-style Thanksgiving feast, with the help of individuals and members of Community Church of Christ, New Beginners Church, and several local businesses.

Ramona Allen, outreach coordinator for New Beginners Church, said she draws up a standard Thanksgiving dinner and asks people to volunteer for different responsibilities — buying food items, cooking the turkeys, or bringing side dishes Thursday.

“I usually start in October … calling the different entities,” Allen said. “Different people signed up for what they were able to bring.”

Community Church of Christ volunteered to make the ham, cabbage and potato salad. New Beginners Church is helping with other side items and cooking some of the turkeys, while Grace United Methodist Church and various individuals in the community are cooking the rest.

On Monday, Allen pushed a cart through the Food Lion on Webb Avenue in Burlington, while Dave Morton loaded 14 frozen turkeys into it. Allen said Morton buys the turkeys every year, and DeBoer & Gabriel Properties LLC — the company that manages Eastbrooke Apartments — always makes monetary donations to the feast.

“They make up the difference,” Allen said.

On Tuesday night, a group was making the potato salad from potatoes donated by West Webb Grill & Curb Market. Allen said the grocer donated four 10-pound bags.

“That’s a whole lot of potatoes to peel,” she said.

Tonight is when everyone — from churches to individuals — cooks the turkeys and side items, which are brought to Grace United Methodist Church at about 11:15 a.m. Thursday for the afternoon dinner.

Brookdale Senior Living started preparing its meals even earlier, since its eight independent or senior living locations throughout the Triangle and surrounding areas will be delivering 700 dinners to seniors beyond the facilities’ walls.

In addition to providing meals for their residents, the eight locations within the Brookdale Senior Living company have cooked gourmet meals of turkey and gravy, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish and pumpkin pie for elderly individuals in the community who don’t have families or can’t make it out of the house for Thanksgiving events.

Rebecca Smith, senior regional sales director for Brookdale Senior Living, said associates and partners of each community recommend individuals in the community they know won’t be eating Thanksgiving dinner with family, after clearing it first with the seniors.

“We start three or four months ahead of time,” Smith said. “Believe it or not, the meal part is not the biggest part of the challenge,” but rather it’s “really identifying the people who need” meals.

Across the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area, Brookdale Senior Living is delivering 400 meals. Locally, Burlington Manor is tasked with delivering 41 meals — which is still a lot of preparation considering that Burlington Manor’s chefs also have to prepare meals all day for its 55 residents.

That’s why Andrew Paul, a chef at Burlington Manor, ordered so much of the necessary ingredients from the company’s standard vendor, Cisco, last week.

Paul said the cranberry sauce, turkeys and pumpkin pies came in last week.

“And then the rest came in (Monday),” he said, referring to the green beans, French fried onions for green bean casserole, stuffing ingredients and whipped cream.

On Tuesday, Paul and the rest of Burlington Manor’s staff prepared all the individual foods in the manor’s full kitchen.

“I already made the green bean casserole” and the stuffing, Paul said Tuesday afternoon. He said he’d begun cooking that morning at 7:30 and would stay in the kitchen until about 5:30 p.m. to finish.

Today, the Burlington Manor staff is assembling the packaging containers that will hold the food delivered later. The items within each meal are all individually packaged, Smith said, so the dessert isn’t mixing with the turkey. The food will also be cooled so seniors at home can reheat and eat their Thanksgiving meals at their leisure.

“We really want to be able to make a difference in people’s lives,” Smith said.

Allied Churches of Alamance County and First Baptist Church on Apple Street are partnering to do the same, but actually started cooking turkeys last week and freezing them since Allied Churches doesn’t have the oven space to cook all 72 turkeys in one day.

First Baptist Church provided the funds to purchase the ingredients — as well as the venue and the volunteers to serve Thursday’s Thanksgiving lunch — and Allied Churches did all the cooking. Or rather, is still doing all the cooking.

“We’re cooking nonstop,” said Kim Crawford, director of Allied Churches. “We’ll be cooking at the shelter at 6 in the morning on Thanksgiving just to get ready.”

That’s because John Robinson, Allied Churches’ kitchen director, and volunteers are preparing enough food to serve 800 people — both from the shelter and from the community.

“I started last week, cooking the turkeys and slicing them up,” then freezing them, Robinson said. “We cooked a total of 72 turkeys.”

On Tuesday, Robinson still had the green beans, candied yams, dressing and banana pudding to make. He’d ordered 60 cans of green beans and 60 cans of yams, and said, “I’ve got three cases of bananas, two-and-a-half cases of vanilla wafers, and three cases of canned pudding.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the cooking itself that challenged Robinson.

“It’s the planning and the prepping of the cooking,” he said, though Robinson is fortunate to have volunteers from Allied Churches and First Baptist Church “to do my dicing and slicing.”

Paul agreed and said, “The cooking is the easy part, actually.”

“The biggest stress is getting everything in one place at one time,” and delegating individual tasks, he said. “It’s just logistics.”